MLS’s Polymarket deal looks even worse after players’ gambling bans | Leander Schaerlaeckens

<p>With its credibility swaying in the wake of a betting scandal, the very last thing the league needed was to be in business with a prediction platform</p><p>The timing of the suspensions was unfortunate. Or perhaps it was karmically inevitable.</p><p>Forty-two days after Major League Soccer announced a new partnership with Polymarket – a prediction platform that lets its users bet on just about anything, including whether, when, and where <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2026/jan/30/polymarket-prediction-markets-betting">one country will bomb another</a> – a press release went out. A pair of Ghanaian-born former MLS players, Derrick Jones and Yaw Yeboah, had been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/mar/09/mls-gives-derrick-jones-and-yaw-yeboah-lifetime-bans-for-betting-on-own-games">banned from the league for life</a> for betting on games, including their own.</p><p><em>Leander Schaerlaeckens’ book on the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, is out on 12 May. You can <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/722130/the-long-game-by-leander-schaerlaeckens/">preorder it here</a>. He teaches at Marist University.</em></p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/mar/10/mlss-polymarket-deal-looks-even-worse-after-players-gambling-bans">Continue reading...</a>